Watercolor look

This morning I was working on a piece of art for a poster, and I was experimenting with the sky. I thought you might enjoy seeing a bit of the process.

Different papers give different looks
I wanted to get a very wet, watercolor look with my markers, so I decided to color a printout on inexpensive copier paper. (you can also color much faster on this paper as it uses so little ink). When you work with many layers of subtle colors on thin, soft paper it is much easier to move around.

I used C0, C1, C3, B41, BV000 and BV23 on the sky, along with colorless blender. (I lightly drew the cloud shapes in pencil so the lines ween't very dark). I added final highlights with Y00, then I used a LOT of blender. I used the chisel nib, as it was a great way to push and mush subtle colors together on large areas.

On thin paper, you need to be extra careful, as the color will want to keep spreading long after you are done, so around the edges of an area, you might find yourself going back with many light, careful layers of blender.

To show you how much blender I used, here is the backside of the paper. See how soft and washed together the colors are? That is due to the colorless blender.

The backside has a very different look, once you remove the dark black lines. (I really like it!!) However, for this project, I need a black and white version as well as the colored version, so I needed to run with the outlines.

For the rest of the ship, I streaked in colors like W1, E42, C1, C3, BV23, E44, E57 and E29. I used accent colors of R32 and R59. For the water I used B00, B34, B41, G24, BV23, BV000, and Y00.

Here is the final version, with all the yellow highlights and extra color added into the shadows. I think my client will really like this for the poster they need.

If you get a chance, experiment with soft, watery coloring and using colorless blender on a thin paper to see if you like the results. If you want your own antique sailing vessel to download and color, you can download one from our website here.